My Year in Books 2025

[DNF] means did not finish. Usually a bad sign. [R] means a re-read.

My Goodreads.

In Progress

• Barling, Julian. The Science of Leadership.
• Barnum, Todd. The Cybersecurity Manager's Guide: The Art of Building Your Security Program.
• Bellovin, Steven M. Thinking Security: Stopping Next Year's Hackers.
• Evans, Claire L. Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet.
• Hemingway. For Whom the Bell Tolls.
• Kahn, David. The Codebreakers. If, at ~1,000 pages, this seems overwhelming, read Singh's The Code Book instead. But if you want the deets, this is the one and only.
• Lockhart, Paul. Measurement.
• Petzold, Charles. The Annotated Turing.
• [R] Rippetoe, Mark. Starting Strength, 3rd Ed. A re-read in that I have a well-worn copy of the second edition that has been my main lifting bible for many years (alongside Jonathon M. Sullivan and Andy Baker's The Barbell Prescription, now that I am an Old). I bought the third edition mainly because it describes the so-called "Press 2.0" exercise.
• Watkins, Michael D. The First 90 Days.

The Stand Outs

• DeLong, Brad. Slouching Towards Utopia.
• Didion, Joan. South and West. As always, you can never go wrong with Joan.
• Wooldridge, Adrian. The Aristocracy of Talent. The history of, and current state of, the meritocratic ideal, and how we can address its weaknesses and failures. Lazy thinkers equate imperfect systems with failed systems and aggitate to throw the whole thing out. "All systems are artificial."—Forrest E. Morgan, Living the Martial Way. Our task is to find the best of the imperfect systems (democracy, meritocracy), and to find ways of mitigating their weaknesses.

YMMV

• Barling, Julian. Brave New Workplace. The content is great, but the book is surprising for its poor editing. Target audience may not necessarily be leaders, though I would recommend it to anyone in a leadership position. There are valuable practical lessons to take away.
• Carney, Mark. Value(s). I cannot imagine Trudeau or Poilievre writing something like this. I enjoyed this book. Some may find it a bit of a slog. The final section and chapters set out Carney's vision.
• Rubin, Jay. The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories. Not my cup of tea.